


Snow Men

by mahoni



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: 1000-5000 Words, Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-18
Updated: 2006-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-03 06:58:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahoni/pseuds/mahoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Ronon are trapped in an ice-fall, waiting for rescue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snow Men

The first indication that Ronon was coming around wasn't something John could have put his finger on. Ronon didn't move, didn't tense; his breathing didn't change. It was more like something in the atmosphere shifted.

John had been dreading this moment ever since he himself had come to and realized he was pinned beneath Ronon in the frozen crevice. They were stuck in a space about the size of a tiny closet, both of them partially buried by ice. Ronon, positioned with his back to John, wouldn't be able to see who was behind him. He would wake up trapped and hurting from a bloody gash on his head, with some unknown person pressed up behind him, and, really, John was just hoping he wouldn't be coherent enough to go straight for his knives.

He opened his mouth and took a breath, thinking that there was a one in a million chance that if he was talking when Ronon woke up he might decide to ask questions first, kill later. Unfortunately he forgot about the part where Ronon rarely bothered to wake up completely before reacting to possible threats.

The backwards head-butt caught John between the eyes before he had a chance to say a word. He yowled and clutched his face as his nose clogged up with blood.

Ronon flailed. His elbows caught John in the ribs, his hands groped blindly behind him to try to grab hold of any part of John he could find. Using one hand to grab a fistful of Ronon's dreads to keep his head from swinging back again, he smacked Ronon's hands away with the other.

"Ronon, stop it!" He gasped, wheezing for breath as an elbow socked him in the chest again. "It's me, Sheppard, it's -"

Catching the hand holding his hair, Ronon snaked his hand up to John's wrist and twisted.

"OW. Stand down - at ease - let go of my goddamned arm!" He felt the bones grind together as Ronon squeezed and he gritted his teeth and growled, "That's an order, dammit!"

None of the tension left Ronon, and he didn't let go of John's arm, but he went abruptly still. John always thought the Satedan military must have been fairly similar to the United States military in terms of brainwashing subordinates into blind devotion to orders. Of course, that particular dogma hadn't really rubbed off on John, but for Ronon the words 'that's an order' often inspired an almost Pavlovian response. Thank god.

He panted quickly and shallowly to catch his breath. "Ronon." He spat a mouthful of blood, warily letting go of Ronon's head to reach up and pinch the bridge of his nose. That turned out to be the worst idea ever, because, _ow_. "It's Colonel Sheppard. Okay? I'm right behind you - in fact, you're pretty much sitting in my lap. We're both trapped under a shit-load of ice."

Blood and phlegm was sliding down his throat; he had to stop again to clear and spit. In the pause, Ronon didn't move, and didn't answer. John figured he must still a little out of it. A good sized patch of hair at the back of Ronon's skull was matted with blood, so he probably had a spectacular headache, too.

"Remember we were up on the ice?" John squeezed his eyes shut and wrinkled up his face, and pain stabbed him between the eyes. At least it wasn't broken. Probably. "And the ground just sort of broke open? Big cracks everywhere all of a sudden?"

After a long pause, Ronon said, "We fell." His deep voice was little more than a hoarse growl.

"Yep," John said. "We fell. And fell. And, you know, fell some more."

Ronon shifted, clumsy in the narrow space with one leg bent awkwardly under him and the other buried beneath the ice. John got jabbed in the stomach by an elbow again, and sensitive parts were crushed by a hip as Ronon twisted to look at him. Ronon gazed glassily at him for a moment, until John couldn't take it anymore.

"Hi," he croaked. "Yes, it's me, just like I said. You mind moving? You're squashing my balls."

*

John couldn't see the sky from where they were, but they hadn't fallen as far as they probably could have. Not far enough, it was important to note, to be killed on impact when they landed. Light still filtered down to them. It was dim, and took on a watery cast from the thick whorls of blue ice snaking through the white, but it was strong enough that John could see what little there was around him clearly. He could hear the wind whistle and moan somewhere above; occasionally an icy cold but fresh puff of air washed down over them.

They'd been really, really lucky in general. They could have been completely buried in the ice, instead of just covered from foot to waist on one side. They could have been crushed. The debris around and on top of them consisted mostly of small chunks, packed tightly but unevenly, lattice-like; the bigger pieces, the heavy, human-smushing slabs of fractured glacier, remained wedged several feet above them where their crevice abruptly narrowed.

That could change. Something could shift and the space could open up far enough to let some of those crate-sized chunks come plummeting down on them, of course, but John was trying not to think about that. He preferred to focus on how lucky they'd been. Accentuate the positive. They were still alive. That was a very important positive.

Ronon slumped forward, leaning his shoulder and his head against the piled-up ice, and tucked his hands into his armpits. They were trying to dig themselves out, and making almost zero headway.

"You should leave your gloves on when you dig," John said. "You're going to get frostbite."

"Too hard to dig with them on."

"Yeah, well, if your fingers get too cold they'll fall off, and then you won't be able to dig at all," John said.

Ronon shook his head irritably, but he pulled the gloves on over his stiff, reddened fingers before starting to dig again.

John sat back, sighing. The chill of the ice bled quickly through the several layers of clothing he had on, helped along by the fact that body heat was melting the ice he sat on just enough to make his pants wet and clammy. He curled his fingers against his palms inside the gloves to warm them. He didn't think they would actually be able to dig out, but at least the digging kept them occupied. And it kept them moving, which would help them stay warmer for a while.

Besides, maybe they would find John's hat. The hat, along with both of their communicators, had come off in the fall. Not that a hat would keep him from freezing to death, but, theoretically anyway, losing heat from the top of his head probably wasn't helping him not freeze to death. Ronon had already found one of the communicators, anyway, so there was still a chance for the hat.

_Power of positive thinking_, John thought. _That and a buck would get you a cup of coffee, if there was a gas station anywhere in the galaxy._

He stretched his hand back out in his glove and pulled the communicator from his pocket. He tried to activate it again; it still didn't work. Not having a working communicator was a problem. Anybody looking to rescue them wouldn't be able to contact them. Worse, they had no way to check in with Rodney and Teyla. He and Ronon hadn't talked about it, but they both knew the possibilities were pretty limited under the circumstances. Optimism notwithstanding, Rodney and Teyla were either safe, trapped like them, or dead.

*

"So, we'll miss checking in, obviously. They'll wait maybe an hour, and then try to contact us." John spoke through clenched teeth, trying to keep them from chattering. "Get no response. Send somebody through. Fly a jumper around, maybe. Run some scans. Find us."

Ronon had stopped digging last. Out of the blue he'd started pounding on the ice with half frozen hands, roaring a string of obscenities that impressed even John. Then he'd sagged, shivering, wrapping his arms around himself and turning his face so John couldn't see it. He hadn't said a word or moved since. He was brooding. Ronon knew how to brood like nobody's business.

"They won't be able to get us out," John stuttered, not willing to stop talking until Ronon cheered the fuck up. "So then they have the _Daedalus_ come. It's in orbit over Atlantis, so, just take them, um, maybe, twenty minutes to get here. Beam us outta here."

He was so cold that he was beginning to wonder if his spine was becoming fused to the hard, lumpy wall behind him. He'd tried sitting forward, away from the wall, but he didn't have the energy to hold himself up. If he started to droop forward and bumped Ronon, Ronon jerked away, tucking himself against the ice in front of him. He was like that: when bad shit was happening, the thing Ronon needed most - okay, other than his favorite gun, anyway - was space.

They couldn't exactly get up and pace around to get away from each other, though, so John slumped back, and tried to imagine that the wall he sat against was really the cliff wall on the coast outside of San Diego. Sun-heated rock at his back; his surfboard propped up in the sand; Miranda, or Maria, or maybe it was Sarah, smoothing cocoa butter onto warm expanses of skin not covered by her tiny little string bikini; the surf pounding below them. And sun. Lots and lots of sun. Really warm sun. Fiery warm. Supernova warm.

"Which means...uh." John paused again. What had he even been talking about? _Oh_. He ran what should have been simple strings of approximations and addition through his sluggish brain. "Which means, we, uh, we just have to stay alive for another five, five and a half hours."

Ronon didn't say anything.

John wondered if he should offer the scenario in which Rodney and/or Teyla had not been standing on a section of ice that cracked open, and were able to go back to the jumper right away and call for help. They'd been a pretty good distance away from John and Ronon, closer to the solid ground at the edge of the glacier, so it wasn't completely out of the question. John liked that scenario. Not only did it require that his people were alive and safe, it also meant he and Ronon could expect to be rescued in just an hour or so.

After several moments of glacially slow thought, though, he decided to keep it to himself. The mood Ronon was in right now, it would just piss him off more. Ronon's philosophy in situations like this reminded John of his grandmother's: hope for the best, expect the worst, kick 'em in the nuts if they try to feed you some bullshit about how everything was going to be okay.

"Five," he said again. "Five hours. That's not so bad, yeah?"

Ronon still didn't answer.

"Okay. Look," he chattered. "You gotta talk to me, buddy. You gotta let me know you're still with me."

"Shut up," Ronon said.

*

Eventually, Ronon did start talking. He forced harsh, desolate words out through numb lips, and John ended up wishing he'd stuck with brooding silence.

A lot of black thoughts had settled in John's head, getting blacker and thicker the colder he got and the more time passed. The one - the _one_ \- he'd managed to avoid turned out to be the one that scared Ronon so bad he couldn't keep it in.

"Not gonna happen," John said. He had no idea if he was lying or not, but he hoped to god Ronon would choose this one time to accept a little bit of wishful thinking.

Ronon shook his head once, sharply, abortively. "You don't know."

_Fuck_, John thought, and clamped down on a shiver that snapped through his body so hard it hurt. He tried moving his foot, tried wiggling the toes that he knew had to be somewhere at the end of his buried leg, but he wasn't sure if anything happened. For a long time he'd been conscious of the hard edges of ice pressing the leg down, and of the awkward weight of Ronon's leg draped uncomfortably over his aching knee. At some point, though, that had all begun to fade. Now there was just a strange sort of senseless, heavy warmth.

And even though Ronon had said it out loud, there wasn't enough heat left in John's mind to really think about what that could mean to a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force. But just the way the possibility sounded in Ronon's voice - the way it sounded made John think about a kid who had no home or people left, alone and on the run for seven years, and what the future might look like to that kid if suddenly his new people had no use for him.

Huddled forward against the ice as the silence dragged out, Ronon seemed to shrink in on himself with every shiver. John sucked in a deep breath of the icy air.

"Okay," he said. "I don't know that for sure. I know what we'd do if it did happen, though."

Ronon turned his head just enough that John could see the bitterness and fear on his face.

"We'd have to go rogue," John said.

After a long moment, Ronon's eyebrows drew together, and he shifted again, shooting a glare in John's direction.

"Slip through the gate one night," John continued. "Become...assassins. The terrors of the whole damn Pegasus galaxy. We'd kick ass. Hey, we'd be the one-legged guys who would _win_ the ass-kicking contest."

Ronon's glare was fighting a losing battle with the expression - strangely familiar to John - that said something along the lines of _you might be my CO, but that doesn't mean you aren't fucking crazy_. John tried to grin, except that his numb cheeks were less than cooperative.

"You and me, buddy. Wraith wouldn't know what hit 'em."

Ronon turned away. John closed his eyes and wished he could kick his own ass. That was probably the lamest pep talk he'd ever given in his entire history of lame pep talks.

The only thing was, it hadn't really been a pep talk. He'd meant it. Ronon would not be another Ford.

Even in the quiet of their icy pit, Ronon's voice was barely audible.

"Promise."

John had to swallow a few times before he could answer. "Yeah."

*

"Ssstill 'wake?" John slurred.

Ronon shrugged, barely.

John had his arms locked around his chest, and he was exhausted from shivering. The shivering didn't even help; he was still so cold. And tired. He tried to force his eyes to stay open, even though they didn't like to focus very often.

He had no idea how long they had been there, how long they had to wait until rescue was even a possibility. His sense of the passage of time had vanished completely as of the last time he'd had to shake himself and Ronon awake. He was, finally, beginning to think they weren't going to make it. Not unless that whole thing about falling asleep in the cold being the sleep of death was a big lie.

He felt a hand on his leg, the leg that wasn't buried and numb, and opened his eyes. He hadn't even realized he'd closed them again. Ronon groped backwards, toward John's body, and John watched the blur of Ronon's hand move up his thigh, mildly alarmed. _Well, yeah, that would be one way to stay warm, but...._

Ronon finally found John's arms, and grabbed hold and pulled him forward. John didn't resist; he was still twisted up in trying to figure out exactly what the hell Ronon was doing. Then Ronon reached behind him with the other hand as well, and used both to clumsily tug John's arms apart.

John found himself drawn up snugly against Ronon's broad back, his arms wrapped around Ronon's chest, with heavy, big hands covering his own. Contact with the chilled leather coat sent a quick shock through him, but after a few moments a little heat began to build up between them. John sank into it, blindly fumbling with stiff and senseless fingers until he managed to find Ronon's wrists, and locked his grip onto them. He let his head fall forward onto the rough pillow of long hair, and concentrated on staying warm and awake and alive.

*

The grey-white of the ice shifted, brightened, and even shimmered. John thought his eyes were screwing with him again, or that he was asleep and dreaming. Then the whiteness vanished completely, and he toppled over, landing heavily on a hard floor that was not made of ice. His arm was trapped beneath Ronon, but they had both lost their hold on each other. He fell away and flopped limply onto his back, immediately missing Ronon's warmth. He saw a lot of blurry, dark colors and movement around them, and realized he wasn't getting cold again, even away from Ronon, and he thought _oh, crap. We're dead now._

Then a hand touched his cheek, burning with heat, and it felt so good, so incredibly good, that he didn't notice somebody was saying his name.

"Colonel Sheppard."

He turned his face into the heat and closed his eyes. He heard the same voice say, "You are safe."

"Teyla," he heard himself mumble, because she sounded like Teyla.

"Yes," she said. Something he liked about Teyla was the way he could hear a smile just in the sound of her voice.

More hands were on him, and Ronon's weight had gone from his arm. A slow prickle was building up in his numb leg and he was fairly sure he didn't want to be around when the sensation reached its inevitable conclusion. But he had to make sure. "An' Ro'ney?"

The floor shifted upward with a lurch, carrying him along. Teyla's smile was further away this time when she said, "He is safe as well."

"Ron'n?"

"Yes. We are all safe now."

"Oh. Good," he said, and then he slept.

*

John nearly woke up once, but he was really cozy - borderline hot, actually - and he could feel and hear Atlantis around him, so he went back to sleep again. Then bad dreams started, and he could either hang out with them and wonder, or wake up and find out for sure.

The warm brown hues of the infirmary were a relief. In a bed a comfortable distance away, Ronon sat in red scrubs, wrapped up in a blanket and glaring fiercely at what looked like Rodney's handheld electronic Sudoku game. The whole set-up couldn't have been more different than where they'd been however many hours ago.

John felt unusually floaty. The room wobbled when he turned his head.

"You all in one piece?" The words came out raspy and soft. He cleared his throat.

Ronon looked up. A smile flashed across his face, and then faded a bit, clouding a little with embarrassment. "Yeah. All in one piece. Well, minus a toe."

John grimaced. "Oh. That's not so bad."

He started to let his eyes drift shut again, and then remembered something important. He lifted his head to check out his own appendages, but the room suddenly tucked and spun and waves of hot and cold rolled through him. Falling back onto the pillow, he closed his eyes tightly and commanded his stomach not to turn inside out. Amazingly, it listened.

As soon as he could open his mouth without hurling, he asked, "What about me?"

"You're sick," Ronon said. "I forgot what Dr. Beckett said it was.

"No kidding." The general feeling of ick had tipped him off to that. "I meant, am _I_ all in one piece?"

"Oh, yeah, you are. Nothing missing. Not even toes."

John blew out a breath. "See?" he said. "I told you it wouldn't happen." He risked a sideways look, with minimum head movement, and hoped the room would hold still. "Although, I was kind of getting attached to the idea of you and me as rogue assassins."

Ronon was picking at his blanket, but he was still smiling. Without looking up he chuckled and nodded. "That wouldn't have been so bad."

*


End file.
